Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  He stopped his outburst as Madame Simone appeared at the door with an officer.

  Durand tapped his fingers on his desk in a desultory rhythm. He eyed Madame Simone for a long moment. ‘I fear we need to keep you here just a little longer, Madame. No, no, don’t protest. I’ll make sure you’re very comfortable. A good hot dinner. Think of it as a rest from your labours. I know that in the morning, there’ll be more that you want to tell us.’

  Simone spluttered, but with a wave of Durand’s hand and a murmur of ‘women’s quarters’, the constable dragged her away.

  James grinned at him. ‘I guess I’ll be off too, Chief Inspector. I’m feeling a little the worse for wear.’

  ‘Yes, you should be in bed. I told you that this morning.’

  With the gesture of an aesthete picking up a particularly repulsive object, Durand reached for the crumpled letter and smoothed it slowly. ‘Don’t think they’re going to get the best of Durand quite so easily, Monsieur Norton. No, no. Not so very easily. I’ve just thought of somebody I must go and see. Yes, for the honour of the Republic.’ He picked up his hat and with a brief bow at James, preceded him from the room.

  James had intended to go back to his hotel. He remembered just in time that the doctor was to come and see him in the morning at Marguerite’s, so he changed his instructions to the cab driver. In fact, he felt in need of a doctor right now. Repose was obviously bad for one, he reflected. It freed time to focus on the body’s plaints.

  When he arrived, Pierre told him that Madame wished to see him. She was in the library. With the children, he added. His tone was even, but there was something disdainful in the position of his chin. It made James smile. Pierre was proprietary of his mistress. He was also probably the sole person to know about all of Marguerite’s doings, her masquerades, the place of Raf and Olympe in her life. Yet not even the Chief Inspector, he imagined, would be able to wrest secrets from that imperturbable presence.

  Marguerite was sitting at the long table, a child on either side of her. In front of them lay vast tomes open at pages of fine drawings – insects for Adam, flowers for Juliette. All of them were busy drawing, but they looked up as James came in and greeted him with happy smiles.

  ‘That’ll be enough for today. You go to your room now and wash and get ready for dinner.’ Marguerite whisked them off. ‘I need to talk with Monsieur Norton.’

  Juliette stopped to give him a curtsey as she and her brother dashed from the room.

  ‘They seem altogether cheerful,’ James offered.

  ‘They’re sweet children.’ Marguerite’s look was rueful. ‘I enjoy them. Does that surprise you?’

  He hesitated. ‘No. Should it?’

  She laughed. ‘Given your knowledge of some of my other activities, I thought that perhaps …’ She changed track. ‘I’m grateful to you, James. For your discretion.’

  He bowed.

  ‘It was, well, kind of you, not to mention all that past business to Rafael.’

  ‘I may still have to.’ He tempered his honesty. ‘But will only do so, if it’s absolutely necessary.’

  ‘Let’s hope the necessity doesn’t arise.’ She surveyed him. ‘You’re looking a little the worse for wear.’

  ‘I am tired, I confess. I may just take to my room, if that’s not rude of me.’

  ‘Is there anything you wish to tell me. I’ve heard nothing all day of developments.’

  James gestured her to a chair, then sat down himself.

  ‘There isn’t much to report.’ He summed up in a few sentences. ‘But there is something I wish to ask. I want you to think again about whether Olympe ever said anything to you about her visits to the brothels? Or why she did it, particularly of late.’

  ‘I imagine it was for the reasons we’ve all talked about. She may have wanted to share her good fortune, her newly found wisdom with those poor girls.’ Her face grew pensive. She seemed to be examining some intricate pattern in the Persian rug at her feet. ‘There was something else, but it was an aside. I paid little attention to it, but it could just be linked. Her sister had asked her to trace an old friend of hers. She was worried that the woman might have died. Judith, as we know, was preoccupied by death and Olympe thought if she could find this friend, it would calm her. But she never said the friend might work in a brothel.’

  ‘She wasn’t afraid of the brothels?’

  Marguerite raised her eyes to meet his and he was once again struck by her beauty, the vivacity of her intelligence. ‘There was no fear in Olympe once she shed the pain of those early years. At least I never saw it. The worst in some way had already happened. But you’re fretting away at some knot,

  James. Tell me about it. And help yourself to a drink.’ She pointed to a carafe and glasses on the table behind him. James poured them both a glass. He relished the burn of the alcohol in his throat. It juddered away fatigue, distanced the ache. He poured himself a second glass. ‘I’ve been worrying away at motive. A motive to tie Marcel Caro to Olympe and Judith’s deaths. I had thought that perhaps Caro was angry at Olympe’s interference with his girls, that he worried about exposure. But given what we’ve heard today about his status, his connections, that no longer makes sense. If Chief Inspector Durand can’t get a fix on him, Olympe would certainly not have been able to. And there’s nothing to tie him to Judith, now that Dr Comte is out of the picture as an ally. I’m stumped. Altogether stumped.’

  He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Images raced through his mind, the brothels he had visited, the chase through the dark alleys, the thump of a body on wet stone. He sat up abruptly. ‘Unless one of my original ideas is right. One of the girls in the brothel mistook Olympe for Judith. Judith at her best. Maybe it was Judith, way back when, who witnessed some terrible crime Caro had committed. And when Olympe appeared at the brothel, Caro mistook her for her sister, killed her or had her killed, only to discover that the wrong woman had suffered, so now it was Judith’s turn.’

  ‘But in her condition, Judith could do him no harm. Did anyone at the hospital identify him as visiting her?’

  ‘That’s where the link with Dr Comte might come in. Comte could easily have seen him and recognised him. He knew him well enough, after all. I saw them together. So Caro had to do Comte in, too.’

  A small smile played round Marguerite’s lips.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘No, no, it’s nothing. Well it’s simply that I always thought lawyers had cold minds, prized facts above imaginative truth. Whereas you, James …’

  ‘So you think this is nonsense.’

  ‘No, no, it has a kind of grand logic.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘Perhaps I can help you out. Women are rather good at noticing what other women are hiding. I could talk to the girls, about Caro, about Judith.’

  ‘You can’t go into one of those places.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  He suddenly grasped her intention. ‘No, not even in one of your disguises. Definitely not.’

  She laughed. ‘You sound like a husband, James.’

  He vaulted up, wincing slightly. ‘Forgive me. I’m tired. I should get some rest.’ At the door, he turned back. He hoped his composure was intact again. ‘Your hospitality is formidable, Marguerite. I’m … I’m grateful to you. My brother is a lucky man.’

  The laugh was still on her face. ‘The hospitality is for you, too, James,’ she said lightly. ‘By the way, Raf should be joining us for dinner. At eight.’

  He bowed. ‘Do you know where he’s been?’

  ‘He rang earlier and asked for you. He was rather put out that you weren’t in.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You were supposed to be in bed, here, recuperating. While he was in yours, evading his various pursuers.’

  James met her smile at last. ‘And what has Raf been up to?’

  ‘Investigating the bombing. And he was hoping to see Touquet before he set out.’

  ‘Yes,’ James mused. ‘Touquet may have some more ammunition f
or us. And we need him now. We need his fiery pen.’

  The message from Chief Inspector Durand arrived early, just after the doctor’s visit, an admonition to rest and another change of bandage. The Chief Inspector was alerting him about Dr Comte. He wasn’t off the danger list yet, but he was awake. Durand was going to see him at 11.00. James was welcome to join him.

  He took up Marguerite’s offer of her carriage. She was going to stay in this morning. She wanted to be with the children. Last night, Arnhem had broken the news of Judith’s death to them. On Marguerite’s advice, they had agreed to tell them only that she had died. It seemed pointless to speculate in front of them about the manner of her death. Then, too, they hardly knew Judith, except as a vague presence, always hospitalised, always ailing. They were, Arnhem admitted, slightly afraid of her.

  When Arnhem had made the announcement, little Adam had nodded, the frown convulsing his entire face. ‘She wanted to join Rachel, didn’t she, Papa?’

  Arnhem had murmured assent.

  ‘We miss Rachel, too,’ Juliette had murmured.

  ‘But now she has Judith, so she won’t be so lonely.’ Adam was definitive.

  Arnhem had recounted this over dinner, once the little ones were in bed, and they had all wondered over the wisdom of children.

  ‘Maybe Adam’s right. Maybe that’s the whole truth of it,’ Raf had said. And Arnhem had countered him vehemently, pointing out that even if for a moment they agreed it might be true, it threw no light at all on Rachel’s death.

  But it was what Raf had told him, when they had snatched a few moments alone together later and caught up on developments, that had haunted him through the night.

  Raf had been to see Ellie who, according to Harriet had responded well to Dr Ponsard’s latest ministrations. She had indeed been almost her old self when Raf had gone in to her. And she had asked him to convey her love to James. After that, because he was feeling flat, Raf had made a visit to the Montmartre cemetery. He had brought Olympe a bunch of flowers. He was certain Olympe, who adored colour, would appreciate flowers rather more than the slew of pebbles which they had been told to place on her grave. He had lingered there a while plagued by melancholy thoughts. And then he had noticed amidst the pebbles which covered her grave, a sparkling object. When he had reached down, he had found a bracelet he had given Ellie for her birthday, a rather lovely piece, studded with emeralds.

  Raf had taken the bracelet from his pocket and shown it to James, who had stared at it in bewilderment. Finally, he had muttered something about Ellie perhaps placing it on the grave at the funeral. She hadn’t liked the idea of the pebbles, he recalled for Raf’s benefit.

  But the matter of the bracelet disturbed James profoundly. It squatted on the doorstep of his mind, stealing in whenever he opened the door a fraction and wreaking havoc with his thoughts. He tried for a semblance of order once more as the carriage bumped him towards Dr Comte. According to the houseboat couple who had found Olympe’s body, they had pilfered the bracelet from her corpse and kept it hidden until James had confronted them with their several thefts. There was no reason for them to lie about this, since it was to their benefit to keep the bracelet secret. Then, a good few days after the funeral, Ellie had claimed the bracelet as hers, something which Raf corroborated. Finally, the same bracelet had made its way to Olympe’s grave.

  How had it got there and why? He pushed aside the thought of an Ellie who wasn’t Ellie wandering through darkened streets and forced himself to concentrate on more immediate matters.

  It was five to the hour when James reached the hospital floor Durand had noted. The Chief Inspector was already there, standing by the matron’s desk. He came towards James with his slightly swinging gait, his hands behind his back, where his walking stick trailed

  ‘The doctors are with him now. He’s still pretty bad.’

  ‘I don’t know that I should go in with you. I may not inspire him with confidence.’

  ‘Leave that to me.’

  ‘If there’s time, will you try and work out what his relationship with Olympe Fabre was. One of my hunches is that she came to see him on behalf of the women in the brothels he visited.’

  ‘Chief Inspector Durand.’ A white-coated figure hailed them. ‘You’ll remember what I said. Ten minutes, no more. And try not to over-excite him.’

  Comte had his own room. A wimpled nurse hovered over him. Shrouded in white sheets, he looked shrunken, his face a mottled blue grey against his pillow. Only the pucker at his brow seemed alive. It throbbed red. He raised swollen eyelids a fraction as Durand addressed him. His eyes moved from one to the other of them through a wet film.

  ‘This is Monsieur Norton. He found you on the street. He saved your life.’

  Comte moistened cracked lips. ‘I hope the last is true,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘We know you’re not altogether yourself yet, but there are a few questions we need to ask you urgently.’

  Comte waited without nodding.

  ‘Did you see your assailant?’

  ‘That bastard Caro. I smelled him.’

  Durand couldn’t hide his jubilation. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Why did he attack you?’ James asked.

  The question met with silence. But perhaps Comte had only been mustering his strength and choosing the briefest way to make his point, for when he spoke at last, the words were rushed, falling over each other.

  ‘His women were too young. Getting younger and younger. Beneath the legal age limit. I gave him three months to change his ways. He didn’t. He knew I was about to report him. And not to the police.’ The bleary eyes grew wary as they darted towards the Chief Inspector.

  ‘To whom?’ James asked. Comte’s reply had astonished him. Its content had entered nowhere in his speculations. If he was telling the truth, Comte was altogether a different man than he had surmised. ‘Report to whom?’ he repeated

  ‘I’ll tell you if I’m still alive by the end of the week.’

  ‘A politician?’ Durand asked. ‘We’re on your side.’

  Comte didn’t answer. He closed his eyes.

  ‘One more thing,’ Durand pressed on, ‘and then we’ll leave you in peace. Leave you to recover. A young actress called Olympe Fabre who had a sister in your ward, Judith Arnhem – both of them now sadly dead – came to see you. What did she want?’

  Comte raised his eyelids a fraction. ‘A prognosis about her sister. She wanted to know how she would respond to travel. To a trip to America.’

  James let out a startled breath. ‘A trip to America?’ he repeated stupidly. ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘Told her I wasn’t a fortune teller.’ Comte’s lips moved towards a grin which turned into a grimace. ‘Thought you were part of the plan.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who might have killed her? And who might have killed her sister, Judith?’

  Comte closed his eyes again. The nurse beckoned to them ‘Enough now. He’s had enough.’

  ‘Just one more question,’ James persisted. ‘Did you see Caro anywhere at the Salpêtrière on the day of Judith Arnhem’s death?’

  The eyes didn’t flicker. Even the throbbing pucker on his brow had lost its colour.

  ‘You must go now.’ The sister’s words were a command. She bore down on them, her stiff skirts swishing against the tile of the walls.

  Comte’s reply came as they tiptoed towards the door. It was a strangled whisper. ‘Too much death, too much, even for a doctor.’

  When they had reached the Pont de Notre Dame, Chief Inspector Durand pulled out his pocket watch. ‘We must lunch first.’ He put out a hand to still James’s protests. ‘It will help us think. We need to eat and to consider. Come, we will go to my favourite bistro. They will give us a quiet table.’

  The quiet table was on an even quieter square behind the Palais de Justice. Leafy plane trees rustled in the breeze. Sun dappled the triangular green. It was hard to imagine that a moment ago they had been amid
st hurtling traffic and rushing crowds.

  Chief Inspector Durand studied the menu intently. ‘Will you permit me to order for you,’ he asked in the tone of a man inviting him to a Masonic initiation.

  James nodded. He had just realised that Durand was amongst those Parisians for whom few matters could equal in seriousness the consideration of what food should be placed before them. Indeed, until their order was made, the wine swirled and sniffed and tasted, the white serviettes carefully positioned on their laps, the thick pàté and crusty bread bitten into and proclaimed delicious, Durand’s remarks were only about food.

  When their first course was finished, he carefully wiped every crumb from his moustache and took a notebook from his pocket.

  ‘So, where were we?’

  ‘We still don’t know …’

  ‘Slowly, Monsieur Norton, slowly. Let us see what we do know first. We know that your brother and Olympe Fabre were lovers and that she was with child. We now also know that she was considering a trip to America and hoped to take her sister, Judith, and therefore probably her whole family, with her. We know that Isak Bernfeld was putting financial pressure on her … and therefore a move could only be to the good. We know that Olympe Fabre had a rather murky and disturbing past which even on recent occasions put her in touch with a world of vice and prostitution. We know that your family or should I say your sister and your mother were not altogether enamoured of the possible merging of your two clans.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Hold your horses. What are you …?’

  Durand held out a calming hand.

  ‘I said let us see what we know. I am the detective, Monsieur, and I must be methodical. We must start with Olympe Fabre. It was because of her that I was brought on to this case.’ The Chief Inspector topped up their glasses, sipped.